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Oct 10, 2017

Herb of the Month: Thyme

More than just a flavour for your pasta sauce, thyme is a robust herb available almost year around, offering many healing properties. Be sure to continue to add thyme to your soups, stews and sauces, as food is medicine! Thyme has wonderful properties to keep our bodies healthy during the cold, cough and flu season.

Thyme, Thymus vulgaris, flourishes in the garden and is also found in many wild places in Ireland. It is believed that the medicine we need is literally outside our back door and thyme is no exception. Once you start noticing, you will see it all around you, beckoning to be harvested and used. Please do!

This unassuming herb offers a powerhouse of antiviral, antimicrobial and antibacterial properties. Many herbs have antibacterial constituents although thyme is singular in its high antiviral content. This makes it good for coughs and colds that are virus-based, including strep throat. It soothes dry, unproductive coughs and gently activates the immune response. Thyme eases nausea and digestive upset and is useful in helping to eliminate the virus which may be causing acute vomiting or diarrhea.

A few ways to work with thyme:

Make a cup of thyme tea... delicious! Add honey to ease an irritating cough. Add whiskey or lemon for cold or flu.

Steam, by adding one to two tablespoons of thyme to a pot of water off the boil, place a towel over your head over the pot and breathe in the thyme steam. This is great to ease congestion and to get the benefits of the thyme deeper into the body.

Thyme is one of the fairies' favourite herbs and you often see thyme covering fairy mounds and around ancient sacred sites. Plant thyme in your garden to bring in a bit of fairy light and healing.

Wild marjoram, a hedgerow and meadow herb with light purple to dark burgundy flowers, is blooming right now and has many similar properties as thyme so use this as a wildly available substitute. As with thyme, the leaves and flowers are the healthful parts.

Thyme-infused Honey

Use 1 part dried thyme to 2 parts honey (local, raw is best as it has healing properties of its own).

Heat gently in a double boiler (or create your own by bringing a pot of water to the boil, turning off the heat and placing a smaller pan with the honey and thyme in the hot water bath).

Repeat this process a few times, stirring often. Ensure no water gets splashed into the honey. It is important not to place honey on direct heat as the extreme heat will affect the healing properties of both the honey and the thyme.

Collect some re-used honey or jam jars. Strain the thyme out of the honey and bottle. Ensure the honey is completely cooled before lidding.

Thyme-infused honey makes a delicious medicine (eat it by the spoonful or add to hot water). It is also wonderful over goat’s cheese, as a bruschetta topping with butter or cream cheese or as a marinade over chicken.

The holidays are quickly approaching and infused honeys make a luscious gift.

The hedgerows are suddenly alive! Just as the blackthorn trees go from flower to leaf, their cousin the hawthorn (both are rose family members) takes the cue from sun and Earth and explodes into blossom.

The Celtic people believed that the liminal times of dusk and dawn held the potential of magic and possibility and perhaps that is one of the reasons that the seasonal celebrations begin at dusk preceding. So, Bealtaine begins as the light wanes on April 30th.

Children from all around County Galway have been visiting the Garden for our Spring school workshops. They are planting seeds in the polytunnel, searching for the signs of spring in the Celtic Gardens and making bird nests in the woodlands.

Brigit’s Garden is looking for facilitators to work through both the Irish and English language as part of our experienced and enthusiastic Education Team. Brigit’s Garden offers a range of high-quality, inspirational and educational workshops for all ages. This role would involve working mainly with primary school students but may also include working with secondary schools and summer camps.

It has been a long winter and your home has held you well. Now, as the days warm, you are inclined to open the windows wider and invite in the freshness of renewal. Now is the time to clear away and make room for what will grow in your own life this season. Spring is the perfect time to cleanse your personal space to eliminate old energies and make way for the fresh and the new, to give love and intention to your beloved house and home.

Brigit was a herbalist and used wild herbs to nourish and heal body and spirit. Many of her plants grow in our gardens, hedgerows and meadows, providing wild and free medicine that has been used for thousands of years.

This year the Winter Solstice falls on 21st December and marks the shortest day of the year. Solstice means ‘sun-stop’, and for three days around the solstice the sun appears to rise and set at the same point, moving in a low arc through the sky and casting the longest shadow of the year on our Calendar Sundial.

More than just a flavour for your pasta sauce, thyme is a robust herb available almost year around, offering many healing properties. Be sure to continue to add thyme to your soups, stews and sauces, as food is medicine! Thyme has wonderful properties to keep our bodies healthy during the cold, cough and flu season.

The hedgerows are suddenly alive! Just as the blackthorn trees go from flower to leaf, their cousin the hawthorn (both are rose family members) takes the cue from sun and Earth and explodes into blossom.

The Celtic people believed that the liminal times of dusk and dawn held the potential of magic and possibility and perhaps that is one of the reasons that the seasonal celebrations begin at dusk preceding. So, Bealtaine begins as the light wanes on April 30th.

Children from all around County Galway have been visiting the Garden for our Spring school workshops. They are planting seeds in the polytunnel, searching for the signs of spring in the Celtic Gardens and making bird nests in the woodlands.